Definition:
In composition studies, the four traditional categories of written texts: narration, description, exposition, and argument. See also:
Observations:
- "Beginning with Samuel Newman's Practical Systems of Rhetoric of 1827, American rhetoric textbooks . . . were supplementing Whatelian argumentative rhetoric with other modes. Teachers were coming to prefer books that offered concrete treatment of the different sorts of communication aims obviously served by writing. As writing displaced oral rhetoric, the older insistence on a single argumentative purpose did not serve, and in 1866 the desire for a multimodal rhetorical system was met by Alexander Bain, whose English Composition and Rhetoric proposed the multimodal system that has remained to this day, the 'forms' or 'modes' of discourse: narration, description, exposition, and argument."
(Robert Connors, Composition-Rhetoric. Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1997) - "The modes are faulted for relying on faculty and associationist psychology. Faculty psychology assumes the mind is governed by the 'faculties' of understanding, imagination, passion, or will. Associationist psychology contends that we know the world through the grouping, or association, of ideas, which follows basic 'laws' and order. Thus early proponents of the modes of discourse assumed that one should choose a form of discourse according to the 'faculty' to be influenced and based on laws of association. . . .
"In light of current composition theory, problems with the modes of discourse as a guiding principle of composition pedagogy are numerous. For example, Sharon Crowley (1984) faults the modes for focusing only on text and writer, ignoring the audience, and thus being 'arhetorical.'"
(Kimberly Harrison, Contemporary Composition Studies. Greenwood, 1999)
Also Known As: rhetorical modes, forms of discourse
